Liking Lichen

Not so much as to make a study of it and get to learn the Latin names and work out whether this one which looks a bit like that one is actually the same at a different stage or something quite different. Put it down to laziness. With more patience and time we might start here.

 

But we need something to cheer us on these mornings that chill to the bone just when we're most in need of sun and comfort and promise. So we'll just enjoy the variety and strangeness.

Lichens are thriving in these conditions on the stone walls and on the birch trees among the mosses and bark crevices and reaching out into the saturated air around them.

But setting out to like and enjoy the natural world without wishing to label and identify everything is a quite worthy and defensible position, although easier to slip into if the subject is daunting to start with.

There is a process in human relations with nature that leads inexorably to something questionable. We start off by observing and enjoying. That leads on to identifying, labelling and classifying. Others take this up by managing, controlling and exploiting. Before long some of us are exerting a right to change and modify. From there much of the wonder and love of nature that was evident in the innocent days of first discovery have evaporated and been replaced by a strictly utilitarian view that’s not a long way from the Peak Park’s vision of a ‘working landscape’.

That’s not intended to be anti-scholarship. Many enthusiasts are very wise and balanced. One rather nice piece on lichens can be read here.